On the commodity and its nefarious effects its all chapter 1-3 of capital as you know, but in case anyone else reading doesnt thought i'd mention it anyway. Ime most scholars of pre/history do not have any real understanding of the commodity and its effects, which distorts their views of how markets and such work, so capital is really essential here for examining how commodities emerge and alter social relations. The idea that the revolution must become global or capitalism will return is present in many of marx's writings, but imo he states it most clearly and succintly in "The Revolutionary Movement" (Jan1 1849).

In terms the development of prehistoric societies, Friedman and Rowlands (eds.) The Evolution of Social Systems has lots of stuff on the development of class society. Particularly from the essays by Kajsa Eckholm ("External Exchange and the Transformation of Central African Social Systems"), P. Bonte ("Non-Stratified Social Formations Among Pastoral Nomads"), and Friedman & Rowlands ("Notes Towards and Epigenetic Model of the Evolution of Civilisation"). The latter two construct useful models of the development, but I disagree with some aspects of both and their model doesnt examine primitive communism and its demise.

Another good work on the development of ancient empires is Mogens Trolle Larsen (ed.) Power and Propaganda: A Symposium on Ancient Empires, especially the essays by Eisenstadt ("Observations and Queries about Sociological Aspects of Imperialism in the Ancient World"), Eckholm and Friedman (""Capital," Imperialism, and Exploitation in Ancient World Systems"), Larsen ("The Tradition of Empire in Mesopotamia"), and Susan Frankenstein ("The Phoenicians in the Far West: A Function of Neo-Assyrian Imperialism").

Stuff by indigenous folks like Forbes Columbus and Other Cannibals or Kayanesenh Paul Williams Kayanerenkó:wa: The Great Law of Peace have also influenced my analysis a lot, seeing how native folks being invaded by commodityproducers understand and understood it in the Americas provides useful questions and frameworks for examining those processes in prehistory.

For instance, the Phoenicians, Greeks, Chinese, Japanese, and Romans all used booze in the same way (i.e. to cheat natives by getting them drunk). Nothing is written from the native gaul, briton, berber, etc, perspective on this, or even about it at all (other than greeks glorying in profit and laughing at the drunkard barbarians getting cheated). But by examining whats happened in other native societies colonisers have dumped booze on, imo we can begin to understand the likely effects the wine had on northern europeans societies (and archaeologically, we see evidence of increased violence and patriarchal structures).

Lastly in terms of concrete historical and prehistorical evidence, i'm just about finished (~1930/2000 pages) Cambridge World Prehistory (absurdly dry reading). Before that i read a few more regional prehistory books (oxford prehistory of the near east, Cunliffe's facing the ocean, Broodbank's Making the Middle Sea, and a few whose titles i've forgotten that covered a bit of the emergence of "civilisation" in China, Peru, and Mexico, and lots about Rome's relationship with "barbarians".

In terms of more recent history, my curiosity about the origins and functioning of colonialism and imperialism really started reading Walker's The Conquest of Ainu Land: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590-1800. I was amazed how similar the methods of even the early shogunate were to Britain and France's methods in Canada. Since then ive read stuff like One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark and From Chiefs to Landlords: Social and Economic Change in the Western Highlands and Islands, c.1493-1820, Peasants, merchants, and markets : inland trade in medieval England, 1150-1350, etc, to get as concrete a view of these processes as I could, and I sorta just slowly worked back from there towards prehistory, trying to figure out when/how the processes started.

And all that reading has really led me back to marx's description in ch1-3 of the emergence of commodities, and how class society starts from there. It lines up, at least imo from what ive read, quite well with the actual prehistorical evidence—astounding when you think how much less research on the period he had access to.